"Welcome To The New Jim Crow " The Mass Incarceration of African-American Men

If you approach any person on the street who has even the most limited knowledge about the African-American experience here in a America, and ask them have blacks made progress in the political, social, educational & economic realm of our society. You will probably get a resounding YES! Blacks, Whites, Arabs, Asians & Hispanics would agree with this. Most likely the percentage of the affirmitive would vary among each ethnic group, with the highest % of those who agree being white and the lowest being among blacks.

How can someone disagree? Just look at all the black people who have broken the chains of social opression to make into the upper echelon of the American Dream and have established the print of black american normalcy. We have, Oprah Winfery, Jay-Z, Bob Johnson, Bill Cosby, Michael Jordan & of course our 44th President of The United States Barack Hussein Obama. This list goes on & on. But of course (insert sarcastisc voice here) all of these successful black people recieved there riches by  belonging to secret satanic societies, such as the Illuminati, The Boule & The Freemasons. By the way shout out to my bruhs the Prince Hall Free & Accepted Masons, members of King David Lodge # 20 of Muskegon MI. Travel light Bruhs.  

With all of that being said, there is no way we can deny the progress we've made. I for one, will not & cannot deny advancements by our people. But you must understand that the progress of a people is not determined by how many wealthy individuals they have produced over time. It's determined by the seismic shift of advancement the group has made over all. I want you to take a look at some alarming facts about the incarceration of the black men in our country. According to Michelle Alexander author of "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness". 


* There are more African Americans under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

* As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.

* If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas, like Chicago, have been labeled felons for life. These men are part of a growing undercaste -- not class, caste -- a group of people who are permanently relegated, by law, to an inferior second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits -- much as their grandparents and great-grandparents once were during the Jim Crow era.

I attribute "The War on Drugs" as the catalyst of this phenomenon. The so called war on drugs which is a war thats been wage pretty much exculsively on poor communities & predominately on people of color. It has given our country ways to legally deny black men the right to vote, automatically excluded them from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits.

Naysayers will try and attribute these facts by insisting that it is the rising crime rates in the black community that has made these numbers possible. However, some studies indicate that white youth are significantly more likely to engage in illegal drug dealing than black youth. The issue is that black men are incarcerated at such a higher rate for the same exact crime that his white counterparts recieve probabations & slaps on the wrist for.

So while we in the right hand imprison black men at least 5 times before the age of  25 for the same crimes white men are giving a pass on. Then upon release, place them into a caste system where there is virtually no way for them to advance in a already weak economy, predjudice workforce, automatic denial of finacial aid for college & public benefits because of his criminal past. Then in the left hand, we deny predominately black families more benefits if he resides in the home with his kids & their mother, so she keeps him out the home to keep higher food stamps & TANF benefits, provide her with housing benefits, educational opportunities, employment opportunities which then  creates a self-delusional idea of a "independent woman" which unfortunately leads to a divide in the black family because he can't provide and she thinks she doing both jobs as parents. She remaims pacified & he remains classified. and none of us advances.

So while we were crowning President Clinton as the 1st Black President (Pre-Obama) because he played a saxaphone, smoked weed & recieved fallatio in the oval office from an intern we weren't looking at the fact that he alone could have overriden the congressional vote to pass this mandatory minimum, but he declined to do so, and the 100:1 ratio persist to this day....Part 2 of this will focus on Prisons them self and the inhumane treatment. Is it a place for punishment, rehabilition or both...Until next time.....Peace

"The Broken Window Theory" Black Men Reclaim Your Communities.

There is an old african proverb that I'm sure all of my readers are familar with. Its goes, "It takes a village to raise a child". This quote has been used so many times & commercialized that the power behind it has almost diminished. The concept behind this proverb is to indicate that not only does mom & dad have a responsibility to raise their children, but the entire community is obligated to. Aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors, friends, everyone raises every child.  Out of the many traditions, beliefs & practices that our ancestors abandoned willingly or by force through slavery, I am glad that this is one of the ones that carried on.

However, even this concept & tradition has not been able to stand the test of time. We now live in the age of "Me". People are now only concerned with themselves, they only look out for their own interest, their own home, their own family & their own children. Even worse, is that home, family, & children are not even concerned for anymore, but we'll discuss that another time.

After my freshman year at Ferris State University, I came home to deliver a speech for a "Rites of Passage" ceremony. (Pause) I want to take this time out to briefly explain to my readers who may not know what exactly a "Rites of Passage" is.  A rite of passage is an african ritual that marks a person's progress from one status to another. This ritual can consist of many tests of endurance, knowledge, agility etc. After the person(s) complete these particular tasks they must go in front of the community elders & ask for permission to become an adult. If the community elders feels they haven't complied or have been less than satisfactory they can be denied permission into adulthood. Now that is key because they may by all means in age be considered an adult in our society today, but to that community they are still considered children.

Now during my rite of passage our tasks included community service, book reports from required readings, learning a new language which at that time was Swahili (I now speak french as a second language), skills in public speaking, completing school homework & maintaining good grades. Yeah, it seemed like alot, and yes it was alot, but it built character & most importantly we stayed so busy we didn't have time to get in trouble.

So here I am delivering this speech in 1997 as a "Man" (so said my elders). Now in this speech I entitled it "The Village Garden," and in a nut shell what I said was that even today the village is continuing to raise the child, but the problem was that the wrong people were tending the village. What I cleverly did was compare our communities to "Gardens". I personified a garden to show the comparisons to our village. I said that the children were the seeds, and that the gardeners were the elders or the proper ones to help these seeds eventually blossom & grow. However, if you do not tend to the garden as you should, weeds will begin to infiltrate the garden & kill the flowers. The weeds being drug dealers, drug users, prostitutes, thugs etc.

This brings me to the concept of the "Broken Window Theory" The broken window theory is a theory that uses cause & effects to prove that disorder and vandalism & other crimes can be spread like a disease and contribute to the decline of a neighborhood, and that with community effort of monitoring and maintaining your neighborhood in a well-ordered condition it could possible to prevent further vandalism as well as an escalation into more serious crimes. This theory was first introduced in a 1982 article by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L Kelling. Since then it has been subject to great debate both within the social science and in the public debate.

Now let me quickly explain why I believe this to be true. I grew up in the projects of Pontiac Michigan, affectiontley known as the  P.J.P or the Project Posse. Lakeside Homes was the proper name. And at that time this community was considered to be the most dangerous in the city. It has now been torned down due to gentrification. If you enterd this place, especially after dark, you better be quick to either tell the gang memebers there who you were, who you were with, who your related to and your buisness there. If not, you could end up leaving in the back of an ambulance or in a coroner van. True story, just asked my sisters boyfriend at the time. He & his friend left in an ambulance.

Do you see how the gang took control over the community? Do you see how they have the power to control & dictate who enters & who can't? Why can't this be done in the reverse? Or even for that matter go back to when the positive black men in the community would lead the community to were their  women & children felt safe. This means patrol our communities, if there is a vacant home who's grass needs to be cut, cut it, so that it looks livable or occupied, if the vacant home has a  broken window, fix the window. If you don't, it's likely kids or gangs will break the rest of the windows because it shows knowone cares about this home. Eventually all the windows will be broken, then they will break into the vacant home, use it as a drug spot, a place for prostitution drug use, or the homless will move in, they will begin loitering and eventually it will spread across the street until someone breaks into your home, the whole neighborhood is now overun & it now takes police 5 hrs to come on an emergency call.

Form neighborhood watches. Neighborhood watches is not a snitch group. Snitching is when 2 or more people are engaged in illegal activities. 1 of the 2 is caught by the authorities and decide or is forced to give up the other in exchange for a lesser penalty. But if an innocent person witnessess a crime that can or has brought harm to them or others and tells the authorities, I'm sorry but thats not snitching & if you think I am a snitch after reading this then okay I'll be that. I'd rather turn in someone for killing a 5 yr old who was a victim of a stray bullet than know who did it and not say anything. I have a conscience.

So as I sit here sipping my green tea giving you my 2 cents on life, community, obligation & duty. I cannot help but hear the kids unsupervised outside instigating a fight. In the spirit of reclaimimg my community I'm headed outside to break it up...Peace.